Mar-a-Lago shooting highlights President Trump security challenges

The deadly standoff at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend is the latest in a series of high-profile security incidents involving the president Donald TrumpFormer Secret Service officials also warn that lone, low-tech actors now pose one of the toughest challenges to presidential protection.

“It should be clear to all of us by now that Trump is the most threatening president in the history of the United States,” former Secret Service agent William “Bill” Gage told Fox News Digital on Monday, pointing to several high-profile incidents in recent years. Unlike previous presidencies, where threat levels often decline over time, Gage said, “The longer he lasts, the more frequently these attacks will occur.”

Gage said the cases that are most difficult to prevent are often the least complex. He noted that the recent incidents were “very low-tech attacks carried out by people with no training” using primitive weapons. “If you were standing behind them in line at Starbucks, you wouldn’t give them a second glance,” he said.

Gage said the threat landscape has changed over the course of his 12-year career as a Secret Service agent. When he joined the Secret Service in 2002, he said the agency was moving away from what he described as the traditional “lone gunman” model — figures like Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated John F. Kennedy, or international militants like Carlos the Jackal, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s — and adapting to… The post-September 11 world It focused on coordinated terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda and later ISIS.

The deadly standoff at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend is the latest in a series of high-profile security incidents involving President Donald Trump. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

“But if you look at Butler and the two incidents at Mar-a-Lago, those attacks were very low-tech,” Gage said. “The low-tech actors are the ones who tend to slip through the cracks.”

He also warned of the potential copycat effect when details of such incidents become public.

“If it were up to the Secret Service, they would never report any of these incidents at all,” Gage said, arguing that widespread coverage allows others to “study what happened” and try to improve it.

In today’s interconnected political climate, this dynamic adds another layer of complexity for agents trying to stop the next threat before it materializes, he said.

In the early hours of Sunday, February 22, 2026, a 21-year-old man named Austin Tucker Martin from North Carolina was shot and killed by U.S. Secret Service agents and a local sheriff’s deputy after entering the secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Authorities say Martin drove through the north gate carrying a rifle and a can of gasoline. After being ordered to drop both, he dropped the can but raised the gun toward the officers, who shot and killed him at the scene. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington at the time.

This incident marks the third highly publicized security encounter involving Trump in less than two years. In July 2024, a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding Trump’s ear and killing an attendee before a Secret Service sniper shot him. In September 2024, he was confronted by agents armed with a rifle near Trump’s golf course while he was playing; This suspect was later convicted of attempted assassination charges.

While these events have attracted intense attention, former Deputy Assistant Director Don Mihalik said the recent Mar-a-Lago break-in does not necessarily indicate a breakdown in security systems.

“He went through the outer gate of an active club,” Mihalak told Fox News Digital. “This was not someone arriving at the president’s residence.” He added that agents confronted the suspect within seconds, describing the quick response as evidence that the overlapping layers of security were working as planned.

Mihalak said presidential protection relies on multiple rings of security because the outer perimeter of a property like Mar-a-Lago cannot be sealed in the same way as the outer perimeter. The white house. “If he ended up at the president’s house at Mar-a-Lago, the conversation might be different,” he added.

He also cautioned against viewing recent events in isolation, noting that presidents routinely face nearly 2,000 threats a year, most of which are mitigated before the general public becomes aware of them. “These are just very general cases,” Mihalak said, arguing that the age of social media amplifies perceptions of escalation.

Republican presidential candidate, former US President Donald Trump, was whisked away by the Secret Service after shots rang out at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show Inc. On July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

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Mihalak pointed to last summer’s shooting at a rally in Butler as an example of how early intervention can be crucial, noting that local law enforcement had identified the suspect before the attack. “If someone came up and said, ‘Hey, who are you?’” he said, “We wouldn’t talk about Butler.”

As Trump prepares to address Congress State of the UnionThe two former officials said the security situation at the Capitol was unlikely to change in response to the weekend incident.

The annual address is designated as a National Special Security Event — the highest level of federal security planning — leading to coordination between the Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, War Department and other agencies. This designation allows for expanded controls, airspace restrictions, and continuity of government planning.

Barricades were erected around the Capitol building ahead of the State of the Union address. (Kylie Cooper/Reuters)

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Gage, who previously led advance planning for State of the Union addresses, said the event operated under a well-established security “blueprint” that was designed to take worst-case scenarios into account. “There is no way to increase this amount anymore,” he said.

The two former officials said the most important challenge facing presidential protection today is unpredictability: individuals with minimal training, rudimentary weapons, and the ability to find reinforcements via the Internet. Unlike organized extremist networks, these actors may leave few detectable signals before acting.

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